The Complete Stories of Anton Chekhov, Vol. 1: 1882–1885

A Russian author, playwright, and physician, Anton Chekhov is widely considered one of the best short-story writers of all time. Having influenced such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and James Joyce, Chekhov’s stories are often noted for their stream-of-consciousness style and their vast number.

The Trial

If Max Brod had obeyed Franz Kafka's dying request, Kafka's unpublished manuscripts would have been burned, unread. Fortunately, Brod ignored his friend's wishes and published The Trial, which became the author's most famous work. Now Kafka's enigmatic novel regains its humor and stylistic elegance in a new translation based on the restored original manuscript.

Stephen Fry Presents a Selection of Anton Chekhov's Short Stories

"Chekhov is probably better known in Britain for his plays than for his prose. For many, however, it is his short stories that mark the high water of his genius. It might at first glance be hard for those not used to his style of narrative to see what the fuss is about - and fuss there is: for most authors and lovers of literature Chekhov is incomparably the greatest short story writer there ever was."

The Complete Stories of Anton Chekhov, Vol. 2: 1886

Anton Chekhov is widely considered one of the best short-story writers of all time. Having influenced such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and James Joyce, Chekhov’s stories are often noted for their stream-of-consciousness style and their vast number. Raymond Carver once said, “It is not only the immense number of stories he wrote - for few, if any, writers have ever done more - it is the awesome frequency with which he produced masterpieces, stories that shrive us as well as delight and move us, that lay bare our emotions in ways only true art can accomplish.”

Classic Russian Short Stories, Volume 1

Russian literature exudes an atmosphere of mysticism, which is said to be a natural result of the simplicity of her people. Often, instead of being "about" anything, Russian stories sometimes seem to be the "thing" in itself. Be this as it may, it is an undeniable fact that with hardly any portent of future greatness to come, Russian literature suddenly sprang fully developed into existence in the 19th century.

Ulysses

Ulysses is regarded by many as the single most important novel of the 20th century. It tells the story of one day in Dublin, June 16th 1904, largely through the eyes of Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman. Both begin a normal day, and both set off on a journey around the streets of Dublin, which eventually brings them into contact with one another.

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets

When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre", describing her work as "a history of emotions - a history of the soul". Alexievich's distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation.

The Stranger

Albert Camus' The Stranger is one of the most widely read novels in the world, with millions of copies sold. It stands as perhaps the greatest existentialist tale ever conceived, and is certainly one of the most important and influential books ever produced. Now, for the first time, this revered masterpiece is available as an unabridged audio production.

Light in August

An Oprah's Book Club Selection regarded as one of Faulkner's greatest and most accessible novels, Light in August is a timeless and riveting story of determination, tragedy, and hope. In Faulkner's iconic Yoknapatawpha County, race, sex, and religion collide around three memorable characters searching desperately for human connection and their own identities.

Classic German Short Stories, Volume 1

German short stories began in the late 18th century as brief, beautifully written moral fables. In the following century, style evolved toward realism in parallel with that of other European literature. From the lofty idealism of Goethe to the searing verisimilitude of Mann, German writers of all styles have left us some of the most arresting profiles of the human condition ever conceived.

Notes from the Underground

A predecessor to such monumental works as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from the Underground represents a turning point in Fyodor Dostoevsky's writing toward the more political side. In this work, we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who, disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives, withdraws from that society into the underground.

Audie Award, Literary Fiction, 2016. The story of Jack Crabbe, raised by both a white man and a Cheyenne chief. As a Cheyenne, Jack ate dog, had four wives, and saw his people butchered by General Custer's soldiers. As a white man, he participated in the slaughter of the buffalo and tangled with Wyatt Earp.

To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting analysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramseys and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, brings the impressionistic prose of this classic to vibrant life.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales

Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

The Lady with the Dog [Russian Edition]

In the final years of his life, Chekhov produced some of the stories that rank among his masterpieces, and some of the most highly-regarded works in Russian literature. With the works collected here, Chekhov moved away from the realism of his earlier tales - developing a broader range of characters and subject matter, while forging the spare minimalist style that would inspire such modern short-story writers as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Please note: This audiobook is in Russian.

Middlemarch

Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East

In The Fall of the Ottomans, award-winning historian Eugene Rogan brings the First World War and its immediate aftermath in the Middle East to vivid life, uncovering the often ignored story of the region's crucial role in the conflict.

Classic French Short Stories, Volume 1

French literature may be said to begin with the ninth century "Song of Roland," and it has since then churned out masterpiece after masterpiece in every century right up to the present. Beginning with Balzac and Dumas in the early part of the nineteenth century and proceeding to Sartre and Camus at the midpoint of the twentieth, the stories in this collection showcase the talents of some of the greatest French masters of the short story.

The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes

Here in one recording is every Sherlock Holmes story ever written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Originally appearing in serial form, these famous stories are here presented in the order in which they were first published beginning in 1887. Included in this definitive, award-winning collection are four novels and 56 short stories, a total of 60 titles. The 56 short stories are aggregated into five named collections, just as they were originally published in book form.

War and Peace, Volume 2

War and Peace is one of the greatest monuments in world literature. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, it examines the relationship between the individual and the relentless march of history. Here are the universal themes of love and hate, ambition and despair, youth and age, expressed with a swirling vitality which makes the book as accessible today as it was when it was first published in 1869.

The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful but slowly going under - maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.

Publisher's Summary

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, (1860-1904), was born in Russia at Taganrog on the Sea of Azov. His name has become synonymous with a certain literary style much admired and widely copied since his death. Typically, a Chekhov story is a "mood", a state of mind, usually with regard to relations between one person and another. Under the influence of the constant, infinitesimal, and unforeseen pinpricks of life, there occurs a gradual transformation of that state of mind. His writing is at once fluid and precise. Most of his stories end on a minor note, instead of the dramatic flourish. Today, Chekhov is regarded as Russia's greatest writer, and his narrative works continue to attract an ever wider circle of readers worldwide.

This volume includes the following unabridged works with music and sound effects:

The Kiss

The Two Volodyas

The Lady with the Dog

Fear

The Darling

Chameleon

Oysters

Finally, "An Essay On The Life of Chekhov", by Dimitri Mirsky, takes us on a tour of Chekhov's life and career. This critically acclaimed work of scholarship is clearly and concisely written to bring into perspective the life of one of Russia's greatest literary figures.

What the Critics Say

"Richly done, with lifelike sound effects and a delicate musical score woven skillfully into Charlton Griffin's impeccable narration. Griffin creates both fine characterizations and the intimate tone of the master storyteller. His reading is languid and cosmopolitan, filled with the fin-de-siecle ennui that is so characteristically Chekhov, while at the same time deeply evocative." (AudioFile)

I had been waiting a long-time to catch up on the famed short stories of Anton Chekhov. Finally, I found the best volume with an awesome narrator and a subtle music score. I love Chekhov’s wonderful, unpretentious narrative with a hearty dose of irony and candor. I really hoped that they had done a Volume 2 also. My favorites were “The Lady with the Dog” and “Kiss”. These two stories are absolutely stunning in their realism and frankness. These stories are still very valid in our present time. A must listen!

Narrator Griffen really brings these stories alive. His interpretation seems to fit the the story's character and theme. I only wish that there could have been more stories included in this volume. It is a little scant in the number it offers, but what is offered is golden.

I've never been exposed to Chekhov, and was naturally a bit apprehensive, but was quite happy to discover that the stories were not only very accessible but refreshing and still quite original and thought-provoking. The prose itself naturally feels slightly dated and often heavy-handed, but the themes and characters are the thing here and each of these tiny little morsels becomes more flavorful after it's over and you've had time to turn it over in your thoughts.

The problem is the narrator. Although the narration is certainly skilled and thoughtful, the narrator uses unnatural force to emphasis every individual word, apparently trying to hit the reader over the head with the insistence that This Is An Important Classic Dammit, Every Word Is Gold. The rhythm, the tone, everything about the reading seems to worship the (quite honestly uninspired) prose at the expense of the story, and the result sounds like the worst English professor you've ever had relentlessly reading /at/ you. Interestingly, playing at "high speed" on an iPod makes the narrator at least speak at a normal human speed, thank god. But ultimately, this type of treatment and attitude is exactly why nobody reads "the classics".

I picked this set of stories as a change of pace from the technology, politics, history, and biography stuff that has become my staple food. I thought this might be good for me, like eating my vegetables.

I must be clueless. Though these were well produced, I found the stories to be dry, uninteresting, and without a point. I know others find this set of stories to be like nuggets of gold, but I can't for the moment see what others see in them.

Read these if you love Checkov, I guess. Otherwise, check in with your English teacher first.